A pretty nice VR sale here:
Talos is good, Eleven Table Tennis will bruise knuckles and Star Trek was fun, even though the DLC for the TNG stuff is needed. Don’t have that Eagle Flight, but that’s pretty cheap.
I tried this one and it’s an absolute unit!
Best VR implementation I’ve ever tried.
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This is interesting. I think it is a good thing. I think.
“A developer of a game in Unity for the Oculus Rift can now add Windows MR support without having to integrate the separate SteamVR Plugin.”
I read that as Oculus wanting to retain the lure of developers to continue to develop and publish on the Oculus storefront while conceding that other HMDs are out there that could represent a significant income for the developers. (?)
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Thinking about it, these things are going to be given away in Corn Flake packets before 2019 is over (not a knock at Acer, just more an observation in general).
I am really going to wait at least till comprehensive reviews are out and things have settled down say around June/July ish. It’s great to have the choice, but it looks really noisy in the VR market right now.
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Let’s say that we get good headset options for Oculus, Steam, and WMR. Which is the preferable platform? Due to the nebulous information about the best way to configured WMR (we kicked around a buttload of settings here), I’m leaning toward one of the other platforms. While Oculus seems to have pretty good support by the industry, most of the titles that I play are on Steam. And it would be nice to not have to run an interface program (emulator?). I think that I regularly use two with WMR. Anyway, any thoughts on the the best platform, given that we might have more than one acceptable headset to choose from?
Well, it sort of turns into a Red vs Green, Nvidia vs AMD type of thing, as people have their favorites.
For me, I would think that a Steam purchase of a title using the Oculus SDK is probably the most easiest to use and efficient platform, without locking to one brand of headset.
I’ve got WMR to behave exactly how I like it, but people get used to stuff (it is why Zuckerburg paid that $3 billion (!) for Oculus, to get a first mover advantage in mindshare). Oculus are never going to let SteamVR work that nicely on their devices, it makes no sense for them to want to improve things. Open standards around VR won’t happen for years I feel, too many economic reasons to avoid it. We’re not at the ‘VHS has won’ mark yet.
SteamVR on a Vive is great, very smooth. WMR via SteamVR does work, but will always feel like a kludge, even the language is evocative ‘Bridge’ etc. Because for API support VR is at the ‘OpenVR vs Oculus’ Pepsi vs Coke dichotomy then WMR will never get native support.
So basically I think the Rift S will be the easiest experience, the Index will be just as good (but not the same as you are used to with Oculus, so if you’re team Team Red then you’ll not want Team Green to win etc) and the WMR will always be a bit of an awkward third thing, at least in terms of games (it might do really well at businesses, this is Microsoft).
I see it as typical for flight simmers, in that you can get by with an Xbox Controller (no setting up, works with every game!!), but if you want to eek out the best experience then you’ll probably spend the $500 on a Warthog and then spend weeks setting it up. An Xbox Controller user will always claim that their way is easier to use, and they’ll be right - but there will always be a few mad enough to try out the HP Reverb etc to get that niche top end experience.
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iirc this was Oculus / Facebook’s initial plan, wasnt it !? I think we are still far away from this ’ nicely sounding ’ VR future 
Well, my 2 cents has always been that Facebook doesn’t really care about PC’s, they just want a new platform like mobile VR (as a self contained solutuion) to offer their content/platform in. They use the PC try out new tech, and keep the existing Oculus people around, but the future for them is nothing to do with flight sims or even PCs. For them they are a dead-end.
The Oculus Quest is a really nice device, just very different to what we tend to use VR for here.
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Hey…I remember flying Flight Simulator I or II I think it was with a keyboard numpad. I was so fast with using the numlock key to switch between external views and flight controls…
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Didn’t think so either, but then they send a couple of Rift S’ to Wags and makes him sign an NDA… 
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Everyone on the official publishers dev kit program gets the same, but I agree it was good they still do that. That ‘I can see everything!’ quote will be worth its weight in gold.
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They really should put joystick grip producers on that list!
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They have a really generous dev program, in that the bar to get some dev kits is pretty low. Valve ask that you have at least a store entry, while Oculus has always been really strong on promoting dev kits to pretty much anyone that applies.
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SweViver tests the XTAL HMD…
Looks really impressive.
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I hadn’t even heard of it - thanks!
Website and info here:
I haven’t watched all the video, but is this right? Hmm… I guess for a pro or consumer that spends a lot already, but definitely top end stuff and price…
A 5k headset, but the price being the 5 thousand USD bit
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Yeah… He spends a lot of time explaining why this headset isn’t for everybody… For anybody, really 
Seems to be outperforming the other 5K headset though…
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Maybe a pro athlete or someone with a Zonda in the garage could justify the cost, but my reservation would be that the same or equivalent technology would debut in the next year or two for a quarter of price.
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Well the good news is that the technology exists for a high end headset with enough clarity for flight sims maintaining a reasonable performance demand…
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I watched the video and it looks like a really nice unit.
What’s encouraging is that it seems to be about the aspherical lens design rather than using fresnel. The panels and that lens wouldn’t cost a fortune to make, so it seems all about them getting their IP value and aiming at the pro market. This means it could be undercut and cheaper if others can make lens like that (patents etc allowing). It did have IPD tracking and a whole bunch of fancy things, but essentially there isn’t a manufacturing reason this would need to be $5,000 worth of tech.
DCS looked crystal clear in that thing… 
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